He watched her and he knew she was nothing but wonderful. Glancing over the top of his book, suddenly warm in his wool coat; Leo watched as she waited tables with the collar of her pressed shirt askew and her hair tumbling down round her face. Indeed, she was wonderful. And so suddenly he was enamored.

• • •

“You're crazy,” she told him the first time he approached her, smiling with color bleeding into her face. “I can't just. . . leave. I'm working.”

“I know,” Leo said. “I meant after. Would you like to see me after work?” Her name-tag said Taekwoon. He thought it fit her well.

Up-close Leo could see the color that glossed her lips; how, when she smiled, she bit the inside of her cheek as if to keep from showing any expression at all.

He wanted to touch her, but knew that he shouldn't. And standing there, awaiting her answer, he wondered aloud: “Do you think I'm handsome?”

Taekwoon laughed at once. Her voice, soft and melodic, bubbled out of her like song; and Leo, unable to keep from smiling, tipped his face to the floor. “Is that a no?” he asked.

“I have to work,” Taekwoon told him. “I really do, it's getting busy.” She wasn't lying in the slightest. Leo had been watching the slow trickle of patrons ease in off the streets with growing nerves winding tightly inside him.

He looked away, burdened by his want to be near her.

But it was as Taekwoon walked away, back toward the kitchen where the other waitresses conversed over hot plates and ordered lattes, that she turned back to Leo and said: “I get off after 5. If you happen to be here. . .”  She laughed at herself. “M-Maybe I'll go with you somewhere.”

Even with so much he wanted to say, Leo could not find the courage to say anything. So he nodded with his face blossoming with color, wishing 5 o'clock would come much sooner.

• • •

Leo had kissed Taekwoon on that first evening together, beneath the ghost light of midnight. And she had leaned into him, tall and beautiful with her vibrant hair falling over her shoulder. When he held her, she felt small though he knew she was everything but; and when he let her go, she leaned farther into him as if chasing after a kiss cut short too soon.

“Do you work in the morning?” he asked her.

With her eyes still closed and her face tipped up toward him, Taekwoon shook her head. “I work in the evening.”

“Would you like to come home with me? Tonight.”

Taekwoon had opened her eyes and stared tragically into Leo's face. “I really shouldn't.” She looked at the time on her phone and said, “I should go now, actually. It's so late.”

At once she turned to leave as if spurned by something unseen; and in a hurry, Leo rushed for her. He took her elbow into his hand and pulled her gently back.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, you didn't.” And when it was obvious he did not believe her, Taekwoon promised: “You didn't at all. It's me. I—I live with someone.”

“A roommate?” Leo asked.

“Something like that. I don't know.” She bit her lower lip, licking away the gloss that was there and biting it until it swelled. Then she lowered her head so that her hair covered her face and Leo could not see the way she looked.

“It's complicated? I guess?” she said. “It's not a big deal. I just need to get home.”

“If it's complicated, why did you come with me?”

“Oh,” she sighed, looking away, embarrassed. “I don't know.” He took her hand and Taekwoon let him; she held his gaze as long as she could, until he stepped forward to kiss her again. And she let him do it too, with her back bowing under his touch as he wrapped an arm round her middle; her face tipped back and her shoulders curving inward. All of her: small again within his grasp.

“He isn't my boyfriend,” she assured. “But it's late and he'll worry.”

“You're sure you don't want to come with me?”

“I do, I really do.” She whined softly when Leo kissed her with her lower lip between his teeth and his palm flat against her spine. “I do,” she said again. “But maybe it's not a smart idea right now.”

“Maybe not.”

Silence came and grew thick as Taekwoon rest her forehead to Leo's cheek. She waited in the silence until it seemed she could not wait any longer; it was as if she would burst.

So she asked, with a catch in her throat: “Will you come see me again?”

“Of course I will,” Leo promised her.

“And you won't run away?”

“No, why would I?”

“Because I live with another man.”

“I don't care about that,” he told her, though in his heart he felt jealous. It hurt to feel how suddenly he wanted her to be his. “I don't care at all. It's none of my business.”

“You're right,” Taekwoon said. “But I don't want you to run away either.”

He kissed her under the light of the streetlamps with her hair blowing forward in the wind, tickling his cheeks as he took her face between his palms. He kissed her until she melted against him with her whole body leaned into his.

“I won't run away,” he told her again as she breathed against his mouth warm puffs of air like cotton. Inhaling, Leo breathed her in and felt all the air knocked out of him by the press of her hands against his chest.

“Let me walk you home,” Leo said. “I'll walk you home and come see you tomorrow.”

And how wonderful it was that she let him.

• • •

Leo never asked about the boy Taekwoon lived with, because he could not bring himself to care as much as he thought he ought to. But he visited her often when the apartment was still and quiet and as impersonal as an open house. But it was nice in this way that Taekwoon—certainly, without notice; for it seemed she hardly noticed anything—would bring her belongings each time she visited Leo, so that it was as if she lived with him from the start.

There was something special about waking up with her perfume on his pillow and strands of bright colored hair left on the sheets. To wake up and see the books Taekwoon had been reading, the papers she'd been flipping through; magazines on the night stands and house slippers beside Leo's own, two sizes smaller than his own feet and much softer than any shoe he had ever owned. He loved to have her near and in this way, he had her all the time.

• • •

One evening, as they stood on the terrace smoking clove cigarettes that smelled of potpourri, Taekwoon leaned over the railing with her hair blowing against the wind, tousled and beautiful like something made-up. She was too wonderful like this with the top buttons of her shirt left open and the sharp slope of her collarbones striking against her light skin.

Leo reached for her and took her arm into his hand and when she turned to look at him, her eyes bright as the evening light in the sky, Leo felt it in this heart that she was more than wonderful. She had always been.

He told her with his voice petal soft and failing him, “You're lovely.”

Taekwoon smiled and looked away.

“You believe me,” Leo said, “don't you?”

“I do. A little.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to his chest, able to feel the beating of her heart through the thin cotton of her shirt. He kissed her temple where her heart pulsed deeply and whispered to her how lovely she was, how he thought of her always; he never wanted her to go.

And with a smile in her words, her voice a gentle whisper against a loud world, Taekwoon leaned her face up and kissed the corner of his mouth. She said, “I know it.”

“Do you?”

“I know it all.”

“How is that?” Leo whispered against her cheek.

“Because I feel it too.”

“It can still be perfect after I fish out the shell.”

“But you’ve ruined the mojo!”

“So? It’s a cake.” Techno pulled out a small spoon from their cutlery drawer. “Hey look Wilbur. No more shell.” He flung the little shard into the trash can.

“Techno egg shell goes in the compost!”

“If you have such strong feeling about egg cracking why did you let me do it!”

“Because you’re Technoblade! You can do anything!”

“Clearly I can’t crack eggs to your liking!” he shouted, rattling the glasses.

Wilbur stared at him with wide eyes.

Techno glared at him.

Wilbur pursed his lips. He quickly gave up and started cackling.

Techno started smiling as well. Stepping back from Wilbur, he let his brother curl up on the floor in peals of laughter.

“It’s not even over spilled milk.”

A laugh burst from Techno’s chest. He leaned back against the counter and didn’t bother trying to compose himself.

Wilbur was a goner on the floor. He was howling. “It was a tiny piece of shell.”

“I know.”

The two of them snickered for way too long before Wilbur spoke up again. “You can turn on the stand mixer? We need to finish this before Tommy and Phil wake up.”

Wrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

wonsik lazily looks up from his phone to stare at jaehwan who has his face pillowed into his arms on the table top. when he speaks his voice is muffled and hard to hear.

'well, I was, like, thirteen,' jaehwan says thoughtfully. 'you were, like, I don't know.'

'twelve,' wonsik answers.

'twelve,' jaehwan repeats, a smile loud in his voice. 'right. just a baby.'

with a roll of his eyes wonsik returns to his phone and the word game he's been playing for the better half of an hour. the pot they'd smoked some time ago is starting to wear off, leaving him dysphoric, tired; and it's somewhere between the second and third time his eyes roll shut that he decides he doesn't need to play this game. it's stupid anyway.

the clatter his phone makes as he tosses it aside perks jaehwan out of his slump, but his eyes are red rimmed and exhausted. his smile is still as bright as ever.

'roll another one,' he tells wonsik. it's the tone he uses – soft, not demanding – that has wonsik reaching into his pants pocket for the pill canister of weed he keeps there. wonsik has always thought jaehwan knew some kind of witchcraft, a sort of mind control method, that made it so people did whatever he wanted. there has never been a time that wonsik – or anyone, for that matter – denied him of anything.

'why, um, did you think of the convenience store?' wonsik asks offhandedly as he licks a clean stripe across the rolling paper and closes it.

jaehwan lifts his shoulders sluggishly, drops them. 'no reason.'

'bullshit.'

jaehwan smiles like he wants to laugh. 'well I thought of when I tried to open the back window. remember that? and it didn't come open all the way and since you were so small–'

'I was not that small,' wonsik scoffs.

a giggle bursts from jaehwan's mouth: sharp and high pitched. it leaves wonsik's ears burning. 'you were so small, wonsikie, it's okay. small enough to fit through that tiny window.'

wonsik has half the mind to retract his arm when jaehwan reaches over the table and touches him. but jaehwan's fingers are cold and wonsik's skin is warm; he decides to leave his arm where it lies.

jaehwan takes the joint and lights it. he puffs hard on the end as if it was a cigarette and the cough that follows is purely expected. but wonsik doesn't laugh, though normally he might have. busy in his own head with the memory of jaehwan in his polyester shorts that cut off just above his knees, and the decorative band-aids he’d wear all across his shins. scabs along his elbows and arms and mysterious bruises that rose on his cheekbones, his calves; jaehwan had always been made up of skinned knees and bruised bones.

'you got us into some shit when we were kids,' wonsik murmurs as he lays his head on the table.

'you loved it though.'

'you're sure about that?' wonsik laughs. then his head is lifted, not by his own effort, as jaehwan plucks at the back of his collar – his quiet way of asking wonsik to look at him. and as wonsik's blurry and sleep filled eyes focus, jaehwan is only inches from his face.